Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, a method for controlling the image forming apparatus, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
There is an image reading apparatus that conveys a document from an automatic document feeder (ADF) and reads an image of the conveyed document. There is a multifunction peripheral on which a plurality of functions, such as a copying, a printer, a facsimile, and a scanner, is installed. There is an image reading apparatus that uses an ADF and reads images on front and back sides of a two-sided document by using separate reading units. Such an image reading apparatus can be used to read documents more quickly because the image reading apparatus does not need to reverse the front and back sides of the documents.
Concerning an image reading apparatus configured as described above, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-118565 discusses a technique in which in a case where a document to be read includes a sheet of which back side is blank, the image reading apparatus accepts a user's operations for deleting a blank page after the document is read.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-041541 discusses a technique for determining output of image data to an output unit with respect to each of the blank sheet determination results of the front and back sides and automatically removing a blank page to reduce a user's operation for deleting the blank page.
It takes a lot of operations and is troublesome for the user to remove blank pages from a document after the document is set and read on the ADF. In addition, controlling handing of a blank page all the time is inefficient in implementing a plurality of functions with limited memory resources. A resulting delay in cooperation between the functions can stress out the user.
If a blank page is automatically removed, the blank page is skipped at the time of two-sided printing, for example. This causes the problem that a different product is produced even if the user wants to make an exact copy of the document.
An image forming apparatus may include a configuration in which images on both sides of a document are almost simultaneously read while the document is conveyed. In such an image forming apparatus, even if a first side of the document is read and detected to be a blank page, a second side is read and subjected to the processing for detecting a blank page.
The processing for reading both sides of a document therefore always needs to reserve a memory area for storing two pages of document images. There has also been a problem of a delay in subsequent processing due to the blank sheet detection on both sides of the document.